When I relate random things said or done by my kids, pets, library patrons, or strange people I meet, someone always asks me "When are you going to write a book?" The answer is the same for every mom - "In my spare time!"

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Thursday, January 5, 2012

Teen Cafe Planning

Except that it might not be called Teen Cafe (a name I inherited from the previous librarian). We might change it. We might not. I tossed out, as a ridiculous example, a name Cliff found on a web site - Deliberately Uncreatively Named Group, or, DUNG. At least one individual whose name shall not be mentioned (but which rhymes with Adam) thought that was hysterical. Can you just picture the t-shirts? That was not the most productive part of this week's event, so we're tabling the discussion until next month (which will be the annual chocolate party. I'm sure I will get much more coherent and reasonable answers from a group of teens buzzed on a year's supply of caffeine and sugar.)

What we did accomplish was to come up with a list of possible programs for the rest of the year, then vote on which the teens would most like to do. We voted by sticker: I gave each teen eight colored dot stickers, and told them to put each sticker on a DIFFERENT activity. And, of course, teens follow directions to the letter. Which is why some activities ended up with more stickers than there were kids. And why inanimate objects in the room got votes. Sigh.

Anyways, here is the list of activities that made the cut, in no particular order:

Cooking program
Movies
Pajama Party (come in PJ's and act like little kids)
Murder Mystery
Zombie Apocalypse Survival Skills
Board Games (possibly combining with PJ Party)
Talk Like a Pirate day
Life-Sized Board Game (we did Candyland once - maybe that again, maybe Monopoly)
Guys and Girls giving each other advice - possibly combine with video skills of some of our teens, get into groups to make commercials of some sort?
Bollywood Party/henna tattoos
Science explorations...?
College and Career Night - guest speakers to talk about getting into college, financial aid, resume/job interview advice, etc.
Mask Making
Karaoke
Titanic party (need ideas!)
Graffiti art/wall doodle
Fantasy book theme night (dress as a character, possibly make weapons with fun noodles, marshmallow catapults, etc., and stage a battle between two groups)
Video game theme night (rather than playing video games, dress as a character from one, and...do what???)

As you can see, some of these need to be fleshed out a bit more. What can we do for the video game night? Pirates? Science? Zombies? As usual, they have sucked out what little is left of my brain for the evening. (The teens, not zombies. Although there are parallels...) suggestions very much appreciated!

2 comments:

I'm usually not this organized, but helping our clerk organize a tween group has given me a kick in the butt! We do once a month during the school year (but nothing in May or August), and once a week in June and July. The same teens are usually my SRP volunteers, so I figure it's fair trade to give them as many fun nights as I can.